The size of households is shrinking in France, while their number continues to grow. 4 million have been trained since 1999.
Gone are the days when parents, grandparents and children lived under one roof. Changing lifestyles, an aging population and demographic growth have favored everyone at home. Households are therefore more and more numerous but increasingly small, reports a INSEE study.
In 2013, France counted 28.5 million households, ie 4.2 million more than in 1999. On average, housing is occupied by 2.2 people compared to 2.4 fourteen years earlier. A third of them are made up of a single person, as many as two people and barely a third are made up of 3 or more people, describes INSEE.
A changing society
Since the 1980s, the increase in the number of households is mainly due to the increase in those of one or two people. For Fabienne Daguet, author of this study, separations, the cohabitation of generations and aging have contributed to the reduction in the size of households. “The rise in living standards and the rapid development of the housing stock have facilitated these changes,” she adds.
Thus, in 2013, more than 10 million French people lived alone, of which 57% were women. “Up to 23 years, women live alone more often than men, because they leave the parental home earlier”, indicates the author to explain this female preponderance. Later, men and women generally live as a couple, with or without children.
But after 75 years, women find themselves alone again. This is the case for about half of them, compared to 21% of men of the same age. “They are more likely to be widowed than men, because they are usually younger than their spouses and have lower mortality at the same ages; moreover, they get back together less often after a break-up, ”describes Fabienne Daguet.
20% of single-parent families
In 2-person households, married or unmarried couples and single-parent families are the most frequent models. Of the 18.7 million households, more than 14 million are made up of couples and nearly 3 million by a mother or a father and his child.
Among these single-parent families, more than half are raising a minor child. A proportion up 87% in 23 years. Today, one in five families is single-parent, and the vast majority of families are mothers.
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